Henrietta Lacks’ Family Settles HeLa Cell Lawsuit Against Biotech Company
The family's attorney Ben Crump says the Henrietta Lacks' estate has reached a settlement in the case of the cells that were harvested without her consent
The descendants of Henrietta Lacks have reached a deal with a biotech company accused of taking the woman’s cervical cells without her consent while she was a patient at John Hopkins Hospital more than seven decades ago.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represented the family, announced a deal was reached with Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., according to the Associated Press. The outlet reported the settlement followed closed-door negotiations inside Baltimore’s federal courthouse all day Monday and included some of Lacks’ grandchildren. Both sides released an identical statement on Tuesday, according to The New York Times.
“Henrietta Lacks was not inferior — in fact, she was extraordinary,” Crump said at a news conference Tuesday morning, according to the Washington Post. “On this birthday, America should acknowledge that she was extraordinary in every way.”
Lacks, a mother of five, would have turned 103 on Tuesday, according to The New York Times. She was 31 at the time of her death.
Crump declined to further comment during the press conference, per the outlet.
In a joint statement, both sides said they were pleased to resolve the matter and would not comment further, according to AP.
Thermo Fisher Scientific did not immediately return PEOPLE’s request for comment on Tuesday night.
Lacks was a Black woman who died of cervical cancer on Oct. 4, 1951, nearly two months after her hospital stay began. During her time there, doctors extracted her cancer cells from a biopsied tumor without her consent, which was reportedly a common practice at the time. They were cultured by Dr. George Gey.
Known as HeLa cells, they continued to divide, and remained viable outside of her body in test tubes, allowing researchers to share the cell line widely and perform tests. HeLa cells have since contributed to a vast range of medical advancements, including vaccine development, cancer treatments, and AIDS research.